Secrets of Our Hearts

‘No, indeed, the snake-eyed traitor!’ Nora backed off from Niall, though it did not stop her venting her disgust on his brother.

Harriet too spoke her piece, obviously expecting Niall to listen. With strained patience he beheld her objectionable face, which was shaped like a cardboard shoe box, its expression and features similarly hard. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she demanded.

‘Don’t fret! The minute he gets home I’ll be waiting for him. I’m not having this family brought into disrepute.’ With a look of grim determination, Niall finally got to rest his aching body in an armchair, the brown artificial leather creaking as he slumped upon it. Purchased in a moment of rebellion against having his home cluttered with Nora’s belongings, aside from the fireplace it was one of the few tokens of modernity about the house. Faced with that looming monstrous presence that was the sideboard, Niall bent to remove his boots, then thought better of it. Nora would no doubt start wittering at him, and besides, he’d only have to put them on again when he went to confront Sean. Contenting himself with loosening their laces, he threw an abstracted smile of gratitude at Ellen, who had replenished his glass with Guinness, and whilst she herself supervised the children’s bedtime prayers, he opened the evening newspaper.

But, as before, he found himself reading the same line several times due to the angry commentary of his mother-in-law as she waited by the front window for the perpetrator’s return. Normally he could ignore her, but tonight his own annoyance with Sean made this impossible, and eventually he left the room to seek refuge in the outside lavatory. How could someone of five foot two make her presence so felt? For if there was one anomaly about Nora Beasty it was that she looked much larger in photographs than in real life. Niall recalled his first sighting of her, when his relationship with Ellen had grown serious and she had produced a family snapshot as a preview to what Niall could expect upon making their acquaintance. If he had felt intimidated then by those steel-grey eyes, the iron jaw and hawkish nose, he had felt even more so at meeting Nora in the flesh, for her personality filled the room – much like her sideboard. Yet he had been astounded at how short she was. Short and stout and determined. Wide those hips might be, yet there was barely a hint of femininity about Nora, rather an armour-platedness; and despite the scallops of lace at collar and cuffs, the delicate chain of the locket she wore, and the slender gold band of her wristwatch, there was a mannish strength to her arm. Niall had been quite alarmed, for was it not said that a woman grew into her mother?

Thankfully, Ellen’s jaw was not so square, her face softened by a fringe of brown curls; she had a maternal tenderness in her clear blue eyes that Nora could never have possessed, even in girlhood. For although Nora had been very good to him in many respects, there lurked behind that initial smile of welcome the hint of a nastier side, which he had quickly discovered could be evoked at the drop of some harmless comment, and woe betide anyone who crossed her. A much younger man then, he had avoided doing or saying anything that might upset his mother-in-law – not that Niall was the type to go around upsetting folk just for the sake of it, nor was he someone who shrank from a fight, it was simply that he couldn’t see the point in disrupting an otherwise ordered life by indulging in petty squabbles with the matriarch, even if she did regularly test his patience. But short of hitting her, he could not alter her wilful character – and one could not hit a woman. So for the sake of keeping everyone happy, if things got too much he would simply leave the room, and for the next thirteen years this was the way he had orchestrated his marriage. He could not say that he himself was ecstatically happy – what labouring man could boast contentment with his lot? – but so long as he had a steady job, a roof over his head, and his children were healthy and well fed, he would never complain. It could have been far worse. The rest of the daughters – not just the younger pair, Dolly and Harriet, but also the other two who had flown the nest – all were quite plain, their eyes slightly protuberant and grey like their mother’s, their hair nondescript and their figures unappealing, and he counted himself lucky to have landed the only one amongst them who was reasonable-looking. Whilst no raving beauty, Ellen had the ability to look clean and trim, even when she was up to her eyes in housework, always having a tasty meal ready for him, and she was a wonderful mother to his children. The only characteristic she shared with her sisters was those thin lips, which showed a proclivity for intolerance and spite. Niall had come to know that this was not mere fancy, the amount of times they had ganged up on folk over the years. For a second he rather pitied his brother, who looked set to experience the full strength of their wrath; but for only a second. Never by any stretch of the imagination would he himself behave in such an overhasty manner should anything befall Ellen.

Which was why, the instant his lookout gave warning that Sean had arrived home, Niall was out of the door and over the road in the time it took to tie his bootlaces.

‘Don’t try creeping in!’

About to cross the threshold, Sean jumped and spun round, then retorted in anger, ‘Why should I creep into me own house?’

‘You know bloody well why!’ accused Niall.

Sean scoffed in disgust. ‘If you think I’m going to explain myself to you – you’re t’one who should be explaining, spying on me like that!’

‘I wouldn’t have to spy if you had any sense of right and wrong!’ Niall’s dark, shaggy eyebrows were arched in disbelief. ‘For God’s sake, your wife’s hardly cold!’

‘Three months is a long time when you’re on your own!’ There was a hint of supplication in the face that was very like that of its accuser, with dark hair and vivid blue eyes, if slightly younger and not so healthy, for Sean worked in a factory. ‘You don’t know what it’s like coming in to an empty house …’

But Niall was not to be won over. ‘If that’s your only excuse then get a lodger.’

All vestige of peace-making drained from the younger brother’s face, usurped by contempt. ‘You clever sod! You know what your trouble is? You’re just jealous because you resent me having a bit of happiness when you’re so bloody miserable.’

A second of stunned silence – then, ‘Don’t talk bull!’

‘It’s bloody right! You’d love to escape from Ellen and her lot, given the chance.’

‘Right?’ sputtered Niall, angered by the insult and coming dangerously close to his opponent’s face. ‘What would you know about right?’

‘I know what’s right for me,’ parried Sean, ‘and I intend to get on with it, so you can go back and tell that to the ones who are pulling your strings!’

Now totally incensed at being portrayed as only here to do the women’s bidding, Niall returned fire, dappling his brother’s face with saliva. ‘It’s not just them as thinks you’re a traitor! For Christ’s sake, can’t you even do the decent thing and wait a year at least?’

‘A year – who’s to say what’s a reasonable time?’ This penchant for sticking to the rules had always annoyed Sean. ‘Why do you always have to do things by the letter? Why can’t you take into account that some people aren’t as regimented as yourself and might just happen to fall in love?’

‘Love – you? Pff!’ Niall laughed, but his eyes bulged with danger. ‘We both know what you’re after!’

‘I don’t give a damn what you think of me, but don’t you dare insult my friends with your mucky insinuations!’ Restricted by his collar and tie, Sean’s brow had broken out in a sweat, his face cherry red, his eyes brimming with fury. ‘Emma’s a good, decent woman and that was the first time we’ve walked out together.’

‘Well … I meant no slur on her.’ Blood still pounding through the veins in his temples, Niall’s reply was tempered by remorse, though only for the woman who might be innocent. ‘Maybe she’s unaware of your position; maybe you misled her like you’ve misled us.’

‘She knows all there is to know about me,’ retorted Sean to this double-edged apology, he too becoming less vociferous now, if no less firm. ‘And I didn’t lie to you. I said I was going out with somebody from work. You just assumed it was a bloke.’

‘It was natural to assume it when you said you were off to play billiards!’ countered Niall.

‘Women can play billiards too, you know! As a matter of fact she’s a very good player, and we did go for a game.’ Normally a much less volatile character, Sean managed to bring his annoyance under control and tried reason instead. ‘Look, I don’t want to fall out with you, Nye. Can’t you just be happy that I’ve found someone again? She’s really lovely. I know you’ll like her when you meet her.’

‘I don’t want to bloody meet her!’ Niall exploded again and, one foot on the doorstep, he dealt his brother’s chest an angry shove. ‘If she knows everything about you she must think it’s all right to go out with a man so recently widowed, and that doesn’t constitute decency in my book.’

‘Then bugger you and bugger your book!’ Equally angered, Sean pushed his assaulter back into the street. ‘I’m seeing her whether you approve or not. You might be an angel, but I’m just a normal bloke. The trouble with you is you can’t put yourself in anybody else’s shoes, you’ve got no bloody imagination!’ And thus saying, he slammed the door in his detractor’s face.

Absolutely fuming, Niall dealt the barrier a vicious thump, then wheeled away. No imagination indeed – how little his brother knew him. Oh, he had imagination in bucketsful! But it was not the sort that could be disclosed. What kind of man had daydreams of his wife being killed in an accident and tried to imagine how he’d feel at the news?

He felt this way now as he strode back to his own house and saw those tight-lipped expressions at the window, knew that the moment he was through the door Ellen, her mother and sisters would be pestering to hear what Sean had had to say, and demanding that he do something about it. For, since marrying into a family that came to lose all its men, Niall had been bestowed with the mantle of leader; in name at least. There was a time when he had been flattered to act as surrogate for Nora’s dead son, Brendan, to be treated like a king in never having to lift a finger, his every requirement brought to hand. But callow vanity had soon been ousted by a truer sense of place. Now he was mature enough to see that Nora and her daughters regarded him as just another child to be manipulated, that he held no real importance for them other than to be the provider; for if ever he was to offer an opinion on anything they would regard it with amusement or, even worse, might scoff. Only in time of crisis, when there was some onerous duty that they could not perform themselves, did they deign to treat him like a man – yet even then instructing him how to do it.

So, yes, perhaps Sean knew him better than he cared to admit. At times like this, when all he wanted was to sink into bed after a hard day’s labour, he did regret marrying Ellen – yearned to be free of those carping bloody women. But he’d never do it, for it wouldn’t be right to walk out on his kids. And so he dreamed instead that one day she would just be taken from him, and tried to imagine how he’d feel upon hearing the news, and how long it would be before he could get shot of her mother from his house. And then, of course, being the moral soul he was, Niall felt guilty and sad because there was no valid reason for wanting to be rid of Ellen, apart from her clan. There was a certain affection between them, they shared five children to whom she was a good mother, and she was a good housekeeper. He was sure he and his wife would have been fine if not for others’ influence. But he could not fight all of them. And so he was left to his imagination …

But imagining something wasn’t the same as reality, Niall told himself angrily upon reaching his door, nor was it a crime. Had he been in his brother’s shoes he knew he would never choose to act like Sean. He would do the right thing. He cared what people thought of him, cared about his good name. And by association with his brother, that name had been plunged in the mire.

2

Steeped in such troubles, Niall had almost forgotten about the wolf when he saw it again the next day, bounding across the stretch of track he and the gang had just laid, not ten feet ahead, and making him cry out in alarm so that his companions dived onto the embankment thinking he was alerting them to danger. As before, it caused quite a stir amongst the labourers, many of whom dropped what they were doing to scramble up the grassy embankment. One of picked up a stone and hurled it with such accuracy that it drew forth a yelp. Objecting to this, Niall preferred to stand and watch the wolf escape across a pasture, scattering cattle as it ran, and leaving tufts of moulting hair in its wake from a coat that seemed almost red in the sunlight. One would have expected the noise to deter a wild animal, he thought, all that steam and clanking from the locomotives and the cranes, the grinding and hammering – not to mention the human activity. One would have assumed the wolf would take a wide berth, but no, there he was, giving his observers a devil-may-care backwards glance over his shoulder as he finally vanished into the trees.

Their excitement dying down, the labourers were ordered back to work by their foreman, and soon all were busy again renewing the track. Around fifty in all, some worked with picks, some in a wagon casting down shale with their spades, others shovelling earth into corves, yet more manoeuvring the girders and tracks that were suspended from the crane, guiding them into position, whilst a host of others worked with spanners and hammers to secure it, the whole site a cacophony.

His boots crunching the ballast, his ears ringing with the sound of steel upon steel, Niall narrowed his eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that now dangled from the corner of his long Irish lips, as he squatted to wrestle with metal and timber, and his thoughts turned once again to his errant brother.

A fair man, after a night’s sleep he had pondered Sean’s dilemma more objectively, yet for all he tried to put himself in the other’s shoes he could not condone such behaviour. Sean might like to think that the matter was ended, but he had another think coming. From now on Niall would be alert to his every move.

Thus, that evening, tipped off by a watcher that Sean was heading out again, he pre-empted Nora’s instruction to follow him by dashing straight out for confrontation.

‘You’d better not be going to see her again!’

Clean-shaven, his hair slicked with brilliantine and smartly dressed in tweed jacket, white open-necked shirt and grey flannels, Sean merely eyed the challenging stance with disdain before continuing on his way up the sunny terraced street.

‘Hark on!’ Niall barked after him. ‘If you do this you won’t be regarded as part of this family any more! This is the last time I’ll be talking to you.’

Once there was a time when Sean had worshipped his big brother, but with Niall become so judgmental and strait-laced, all respect vanished in a trice. Still walking, he flung a nonchalant reply over his shoulder. ‘I’ll consider meself told then.’

His threat so blithely unheeded, Niall strangled his intended retort, wasted no time standing there fulminating, but returned to his womenfolk, immediately to form a pact of war.

Henceforth, the women took it in turns to stand by the parlour window, noting what time Sean left and what time he returned, no matter how late. Even whilst detesting such methods, Niall was to play his part too, refusing to speak to his brother and darting him arrows of contempt whenever they came face to face.

It was a measure of their combined depth of loathing, their desire to arrest Sean’s wicked descent, that these tactics were to be maintained for eight tense weeks. Until, one Friday evening in late August, when a day of high wind had already whipped up tempers, the lid of restraint was about to be blown clean off: Sean arrived home with his scarlet woman in tow.

Following the collective gasp of outrage, Nora blurted, ‘He can’t do that – that’s our Evelyn’s house!’

But Sean could and did proceed to escort the woman right to his threshold, both of them laughing as the wind swept her hair from back to front so that it totally obscured her face, then whipped Sean’s cap into the street, causing him to make an acrobatic leap for it, before they finally managed to slam the door.

His mother-in-law was almost apoplectic over this presumption. ‘Well, I’m not having it!’ Heaving her solid carcass forth, surprising nimble of foot, she rushed outside to stand on the pavement and glare, closely followed by her daughters, all bracing themselves against the gale, whilst their hair was whipped and their pinafores billowed and ruffled, and paper flew all about the street.

Unable to see how this would help matters, Niall chose to remain indoors, as disgusted as the rest, though not so vocal. But no matter that Sean and his lady friend had gone inside, Nora and her deputies were to brave the elements for extra moments, standing firm and Medusa-like in the gale, so as those looking out could be under no illusion.

‘They’ll have to come out sometime,’ declared Ellen, eyes narrowed and watering, arms folded under her indignant bosom, whilst her clothes flapped about her.

‘What if they don’t?’ enquired Dolly, the least forceful of them, trying to keep a wisp of hair from her mouth. ‘What’ll we do then?’

‘They’ll have to!’ From inside, Niall heard his wife reiterate.

‘Not if she stays the night.’ When they all turned to frown at her, Dolly explained quickly, ‘Well, if she’s the type of brazen article who takes up with a man whose wife’s barely cold, she’ll hardly have qualms about anything else.’

‘Just let her try it!’ Nora propelled this verbal gauntlet at the wall of the house opposite, before leading the return indoors to maintain her surveillance in comfort. ‘I’ll be over there and drag her out by her frizzy hair.’

Inwardly balking at such a bad example for a grandmother to set the children, Niall sought to distract them, especially the older ones, who were exchanging knowledgeable looks of concern.

‘Is that your homework you’re trying to do on the edge of that newspaper?’ Recently turned twelve, Honor was seated at the table chewing the end of a pencil, as if more concentrated on the row from outside.

She broke away from her trance and went back to studying the pencilled words that were crammed into the white border around the newsprint. ‘No, I’m just making a list of my sins for confession.’

Her father smiled. ‘I thought school had run out of money for books. Sins, eh? You’d better get a bigger piece of paper then, all the things you’ve been up to.’

Her serene posture was cracked by a laugh of quiet outrage. ‘Dad, stop it, you’re putting me off!’ Then her face became serous again as she tried to recall every offence committed during the week, for an imperfect confession meant damnation.

‘Sorry.’ Her father smiled and stopped teasing her, knowing how seriously she viewed the act of confession. Then he turned his attention to three-year-old Brian, who was pressed to one of his knees, unnerved by the howling of the wind through the gaps in the windows, and he pulled the child onto his lap. ‘Don’t worry, Bri, it’s just the silly old wind making that noise – you know like your dad makes when he’s eaten pea soup.’

There was collective laughter from his children.

‘That doesn’t hurt you, does it?’ reasoned Niall.

‘I don’t know about that, Dad,’ laughed Dominic, holding his nose.

‘Oy, mister!’ His father levelled a threatening finger, but his eyes were full of fun. ‘You want to watch it or I’ll be confiscating all of that five bob you’ve lined up for yourself tomorrow, instead of letting you keep some of it.’

Dominic adopted a non-comprehending frown. ‘Don’t you mean half a crown?’ He would be performing his duties as altar boy at a wedding ceremony.

‘I mean five bob!’ Niall was stern but amused. ‘I happen to know there are two weddings tomorrow – thought you’d pulled the wool over me eyes, didn’t you? Well, think again! You’ll have to get up early to hoodwink your dad.’ He projected a grin of rebuke at his son who, in feature, took after Ellen’s side of the family, and could be sly, but was redeemed by possession of a charming smile, which bounced back at Niall now.

‘I only just found out myself there was another wedding!’ protested Dom with a laugh.

Momentarily reassured by the smiling banter, Brian rested his head on his father’s chest, though his ears still adhered to the external noises – as did Juggy’s.

‘Has Uncle Sean been naughty?’ she finally dared to ask.

‘That’s none of your business,’ retorted a stern father, but Niall felt the sharp eyes of his eldest son on him, and, annoyed at Sean for putting him in this position, sought to let Dominic know, without giving too much away, that this was no way for a man to behave. ‘Suffice to say that a man’s good name is everything,’ he declared to all.

‘I think Doran’s a good name,’ mused Juggy, kneeling by the fire and cradling her doll. ‘Though I’d quite like to be called Pretty – that’s what they call the girl who sits next to me in class.’

Niall responded with a chuckle and a compliment. ‘You don’t need to be called Pretty when you’re already pretty.’

‘Father didn’t mean it sounded good,’ Honor broke off her list of sins to explain quietly to her little sister. ‘He meant that when people hear your name they think of you with respect, for the way you behave, and that you’ve got nothing to be ashamed off.’ She looked to Niall for confirmation, and when he gave a pleased nod, she added, ‘And Father’s got a very good name.’

‘So, is it the lady what’s got the bad name?’ persisted Juggy, having received more than an inkling from the angry voices that competed with the gale outside.

Her father decided enough was enough. ‘None of that need concern you,’ he said firmly, and designing to take his children’s minds off this, and also the eerie whistling of the wind, he instructed Batty, ‘Chuck us that book, little un – we’ll have a story before bed!’ Opening the tome, he set upon imbuing them with one of its moral tales in an effort to drown out their grandmother’s voice.

‘I will! If they’re not out in five minutes I’ll go in and drag them out!’

However, the threat was not to be carried out.

A couple of hours later, around nine, when the youngsters were safely upstairs, Sean and his partner in crime finally emerged. Immediately the Beasty women rushed out to hurl insults.

‘Well, I’m glad she has the grace to blush – Ah say, you do right blush!’ scathed Nora from across the street, amid a mass drawing-in of chins and glaring and huffing from her equally irate daughters.

Struggling to pull his door shut against the wind, Sean did not even look at them as he took a protective hold of his companion’s arm.

‘That’s right, take her home – take her back to her sty, and good riddance!’ This from Harriet.

‘I like your hair, love!’ Dolly mocked loudly, then declared to her abettors, ‘Nobody has hair that colour – she must dye it!’

‘With a bucket of rusty water by the look of it!’ brayed Harriet. Even as she spoke the words were ripped from her mouth and dispersed on the gale along with a noisy collection of debris, yet a few of them hit their target.

‘The cheek of them!’ an indignant Emma told her companion, all windswept and troubled as they made their departure. ‘It’s my own natural chestnut.’

‘I know that. They’re just jealous, ignore them – and don’t take any notice of their threats neither; they’re all mouth,’ advised Sean. He put a firm arm around her and quickly steered her away from further insult. ‘They can just get used to it.’